Proioxis
by Bellicose Blue
Summary: A collection of Clato drabbles and near-oneshots.
1. Meetings

**[[This is my new collection of Clato drabbles that, for whatever reason, didn't make it into a full work. Some of them will be actual snippets that would've taken place in one of my stories, while others will be entirely unrelated. Some are fully-fleshed scenes, while others are abstract thoughts. New drabbles will be posted along with updates of _Ichor_ , so about once a week, more if time permits.]]**

* * *

The first time she fought against Cato, it was an accident.

She had been in the Training Center, leaning up against the wall and waiting for her assigned sparring partner to come find her. She hadn't had to go looking for her partner in over two years; everyone knew who she was. Clove was the tiny girl with the bright eyes and the unerring talent for throwing knives, so capable she'd been promoted a whole year ahead of her classmates. When she'd been moved up early, she hadn't bothered to learn the names of anyone she was fighting against. They were insignificant to her.

A hulking brute of a boy had stalked over to her, light eyes raking over her body in a way that amused rather than repulsed her. He was all muscle, nearly a foot taller than she was, and clearly much more powerful than she. Clove had sighed. A month before, she'd grown too confident in her abilities, so her trainers had pitted her against a boy with much the same dimensions. It hadn't ended well. Hand-to-hand combat was her greatest weakness. She was too small to be of much worth in a close-quarters fight, but she'd been scrappy enough to last nearly five minutes before he'd knocked her out of the fight. Apparently she'd grown cocky enough to need to be taken down a few notches again.

She had turned to face him, noticing with faint surprise that she did know this one's name. He was Cato, top of his class, heavily rumored to be the next tribute. She'd seen him the day prior fighting some other trainee. The fight hadn't lasted long; he had flipped the other boy on the ground and punched him bloody. Cato had stopped a few steps away from her, weight shifted onto one leg, face twisted in disgust. Clearly, he thought she was too weak to be of much competition.

To change his mind, Clove had leapt at him, shoved him to the ground, and proceeded to punch him. He'd tossed her aside remarkably swiftly, sending her skidding along the ground as he started for her again. A trainer had intervened, yelling all sorts of obscenities as he separated the two, and Clove had felt even smugger when it came to light that Cato had misread the assignment sheet and had swapped her name for a pudgy boy with a squint.

Cato had sported a black eye and a scowl for several days after.

Now it was a month away from the Reaping, and Clove was set to fight Cato again. She flashed him a cheeky grin, smiling wider when he scowled. "Cato, darling," she gushed. "It's simply lovely to see you again. We just didn't have enough time to chat last time we met." It was the first time she'd spoken to him, unless he counted her muffled curse when he'd slung her bodily across the room.

Cato didn't seem amused. He towered over her, more wary than last time, she noted. He was balanced in a way that she couldn't knock him over without magically becoming twice her size, pale eyes watching her every motion carefully.

"Are you done checking me out yet, Ludwig?" she asked mildly. Inflammatory comments, delivered in a precisely innocent sort of way, were her specialty.

But he didn't react in the kind of seething, fuming fit of temporary insanity she'd anticipated. She hadn't pegged him as cunning, clever enough to see through her aggravating words. His temper was too quick, his brain too slow… or so she'd assumed. "Are you done letting your mind run off into fantasies yet, Fuhrman?" he responded, letting his face assume a slow smirk. "I understand your reasoning, but we really should get to practicing."

Clove felt her face flush despite herself. "As if," she countered with as much venom as could be packed into the two weak syllables. "I think knife training would be a good way to spend the day."

Cato let his eyes drag slowly over the high score boards in the back of the room. Clove refused to turn. She knew her name and record filled the top slot on the knife ranking, knew her record was well above that of any of the other trainees, just as she knew Cato's name held the top slots for sword fighting, spear throwing, and hand-to-hand combat. She'd scaled the ranks for several categories quickly, reaching the top in sprinting and the ropes course, but it was in knives that her true talents laid.

"Cute," he replied at last. "I figured you'd be too scared to go up against me in something you might struggle at."

"Can you even throw a knife?" Clove spat, all traces of false sweetness evaporated. There was something intangibly irritating about Cato, something about his sun-bright hair or brutish face that makes her loathe him. The longer she stands there conversing- she didn't consider it polite enough to be called "talking"- the more she wanted to run to the targets against the wall and throw knives until the center was swallowed by gleaming silver blades.

Cato smirked, seemingly unfazed. "I can throw a spear from fifteen yards and slice your head from your body within seconds, Fuhrman. I don't need to waste my time with knives. All they're good for is cutting steak."

Clove was bristling with fury at the slight to her talent, about ready to fling one of her affronted knives at him, when one of the trainers who'd been watching the spat with idle curiosity stalked over. "Ludwig, you can't throw a knife? Perhaps you don't need to volunteer this year. Our District doesn't care to be embarrassed again."

Cato was scowling again, but the trainer hadn't finished. "It's fortunate you've been paired with Fuhrman for the day, then. Fuhrman, teach Ludwig how to throw a knife- properly. If he hasn't managed to learn the concept by the end of the day, the two of you will continue to be paired until progress is shown."

"That's ridiculous!" Clove exclaimed, more shocked than anything. "It's a miracle Ludwig's learned his own name, let alone how to handle anything that requires finesse rather than brute force!"

Cato cut in before she could insult him further. "Sir, I believe it would be in the best interests of Fuhrman and myself to cut ties. Surely one of the trainers can teach me instead."

The trainer smiled then, a very small and very deadly smile. Cato had pushed too hard. "You'll accept Fuhrman's assistance with whatever grace you possess, and then you'll teach her to wield a sword. You both have a month's time until the Reaping. One would hope you've improved by then." With that, the trainer strode off to nitpick another trainee's stance, obviously closing the matter.

Clove slumped against the wall. "You couldn't have managed to avoid pissing off the trainers, could you?" she sighed. "Now we're stuck paired together forever." She paused. "No, just until you learn how to throw a knife," she amended. "So forever." She ducked to avoid Cato's sullen punch.

Infuriatingly enough, Cato seemed to take to a knife far quicker than she to a sword. His natural adeptness with a spear lent rather well to the small blades he was able to fling with not inconsiderable accuracy. By lunchtime, he had the basics down well and was on his way to hitting the target board consistently. Clove hid her scowl well, except for the one time he'd somehow bungled his lack of skills into hitting the bulls-eye. She supposed that sometimes a negative and a negative did create a positive, after all.

Somehow, this small victory made him that much worse of a teacher. When she struggled with the sword (not that she actually struggled; the sword was ill-proportioned for anyone of less than Goliathan stature), he just smirked or gave her a condescending little laugh. Somewhere along the lines, he'd picked up "little girl" as a moniker and used it far too liberally for her liking.

"No, little girl. You have to actually put strength behind the sword to swing it," Cato explained in his most condescending way, demonstrating the tactic by moving her hands with his own.

"Thank you for the advice, Ludwig," she snarled and batted his hand away, the effect somewhat dimmed by the way her arm shook with fatigue from holding the heavy sword for so long. "'Little girl' sounds rather pedophilic, doesn't it? Figures you'd be into that kind of thing." She flashed him a saccharine smile.

Cato's hand closed rather roughly around her wrist, but his voice was restrained. "You're not my type, I'm afraid. I like my women a little less sadistic and a little more sane."

Clove made her eyes wide, as if suddenly stumbling upon knowledge. "Oh, I see! Opposites do attract, then." She made sure to bat her eyelashes before wrenching her arm from his grasp. It took an embarrassing amount of effort to do so, but she refrained from rubbing the pink ring where his hand had encircled her wrist.

Before Cato could retort, either by grabbing at her arms again or through a verbal lashing (she'd found he quite enjoyed both), the metallic sound of a recorded bell rang through the Training Center. "Time for lunch," he remarked unnecessarily. "Maybe you'll be less pathetic once you've eaten." He eyed her diminutive frame with detached interest, maybe even disgust. "Do you actually eat?"

Clove recoiled more so than the comment deserved. He'd been calling her 'little girl' all day. Surely he knew she was strong despite her size, especially since she'd been one of the few to ever knock Cato Ludwig off his feet. "Just because I'm not a walking protein shake like you doesn't mean I don't eat!" She threw down the sword that had been taunting her, relishing in the clang of metal upon the floor as she stormed away as powerfully as she could.

She was still fuming about his barbed little question over her wilted salad, stabbing it with a fork in a most indelicate way. The other trainees had sensed the rage that draped itself around her like a robe made of chains and had wisely chosen to empty the tables nearest to her. All, that was, except for one.

Cato sat down with his tray right next to her, and if the other trainees were shocked that someone had dared to encroach upon her space, they kept it quiet.

She finally glanced up from her much-prodded salad, eyes throwing the daggers she wished she could. "Ludwig, what are you doing here? Your cronies and harem are on the other side of the room," she told him, but there was a sort of resigned quality to her voice. She'd learned over the rough few hours that Cato rarely did what he was told.

Cato shrugged, cutting a chunk off some grisly unidentified meat. "I figured you'd miss me. Most girls do." His leer and wink turned into laughter as she shuddered. A few heads turned, surprised to hear someone laugh at Clove, no doubt, and probably wondering if she would kill him quickly or painfully.

They seemed particularly surprised when she laughed back.


	2. Let me tell you something true (false)

She doesn't realize the truth about the Games until she's already won.

The Games were supposed to make her wealthy, untouchable. And, in a way, Clove is. She hasn't been solicited by Snow to provide entertainment for the Capitol like they do with the most desirable Victors. It's the first time she's ever been grateful to be average. She doesn't have Cashmere's sensual curves or Finnick's charm, and she's far too vicious for the Capitol to tame. So they leave her for the most part alone, rich beyond her wildest dreams and revered in her home of Two.

She doesn't realize the truth about the Games until they're over.

Clove hates being a mentor. She knows deep down that her tributes have the highest likelihood of staying alive, that being from Two means they're well-fed and trained to kill, but that can't stop the despair she feels as she gazes into their eyes, so eager and, if innocent, then unaware. They're practically salivating for victory, to prove themselves to her and their District, but she can't tell them that it's almost better that they die. They all do, anyway, slaughtered in the Bloodbath or turned upon by their allies or wasted away from famine. Clove feels nothing but ice as she watches them die, just as promising as she was but just not lucky enough.

She doesn't realize the truth about the Games until she's lost everyone she's ever cared about.

She throws knives sometimes, just to occupy her mind with something other than the Games and Cato and all their shattered promises. She'd always been perfect, never missing the target after she'd learned just how to flick her wrist. The years all blur together, but Clove must be in her early twenties the first time she misses. The knife clatters on the ground beside the target, and everyone in the gym turns to look at her. She's aghast, horrified as she stares at its taunting silhouette. She throws another one that lands perfectly and tries to convince herself it was just a fluke. But she doesn't believe her own lies.

She doesn't realize the truth about the Games until it's too late.

The Games do more than break the spirit of the rebellious Districts. They break the Victors, too. Annie from Four is insane, hysterical, barely able to conduct herself in public without having a meltdown. Haymitch from Twelve is a raging alcoholic, perhaps even worse after the Games where Clove won and killed his tributes. She doesn't think she's ever seen him less than half-blind with intoxication and propped up by a simpering escort from the Capitol. Clove barely sleeps from nightmares that tear at her skull and leave her thrashing, paranoid, and likely to lash out. She killed a boy once, a servant who startled her when she was in the throes of one of her episodes. She stared at his corpse for hours, remembering all the times she'd done the same during the Games. She was crying when they found her, tears dripping onto the hardwood floor as she hugged herself and shuddered. Clove had never cried during the Games, not when she'd killed all those tributes, not when she'd evaded death, not even when she slit Cato's throat. It was all fun and games to her, a game with the best prizes of all, and she'd been so ecstatic when she'd won.

She doesn't realize the truth about the Games until she'd rather be dead.


	3. Sometimes they dream

Sometimes Clove wonders what their lives would have been like if they had met without the Games. If Cato was just an arrogant rich boy and she the cold, scrappy orphan who stole his food. If he would've tried to catch her, but each time she'd manage to escape, taunting him all the while. If one day he laid a trap for her and caught her and went to turn her in but found he couldn't. Sometimes she dreams about it.

Then she wakes up, and he's rich and arrogant and she's cold and scrappy but he's never been able to catch her and she's never stolen more than his breath from a well-timed punch as they sparred in the Training Center.

Sometimes Cato wonders what their lives would have been like if they had met without the Games. If Clove was the icy queen bee surrounded by admirers and he the handsome athlete who provoked her mercilessly but could never get her number. If one day he shifted his focus to a slinky blonde and Clove got jealous. If, at the biggest dance of the year, she tore him away from his date and dragged him outside and told him he'd better break up with her because she couldn't stand seeing him with someone else. Sometimes he dreams about it.

Then he wakes up, and she's icy and admired and he's handsome and teasing but he's never given up on her to chase after Glimmer and she's never confessed anything to him.

Sometimes Clove slips into his room late at night with her face drawn taut from nightmares and she curls up at his side and leaves with the first rays of dawn. Sometimes Cato hears one of the boys make a crude comment about her and he slams him against the wall and presses his hand to his throat and bends his arm until it strains and the boy gasps and struggles and chokes out fervent apologies.

Sometimes they wonder and sometimes they dream, but they always wake up. It's a nice fantasy, but this is their reality.


	4. which doth mock the meat it feeds on

Glimmer was as radiant as her namesake, all tanned legs and long blond hair and green eyes that caught the light all too well. She was tall and curvy and laughed in a way that was too perfect to be natural. She was friendly and charming and the kind of ignorant that made Clove wonder if she'd actually known about the poison in her token at all. She preened like some kind of exotic bird, flipping her curls over her shoulder as she flirted with Cato in her not-quite-regulation uniform.

Clove hated her.

The first time they'd all met, herded together under the watchful eyes of their mentors, Glimmer's eyes had slid over Clove, discarded the younger girl, and lit up when they landed on Cato. From then on, Glimmer had been inseparable from him, clinging to his arm and laughing at every remark he made. Cato appeared to relish the attention, if the ever-present smirk was any indication.

Marvel was only slightly more tolerable. He shared Cato's strength and arrogance but not his discipline. He was more than competent at a spear, but that was the only station he seemed to devote attention to. When the Careers switched stations, he was more likely to stare unabashedly at Glimmer than attempt to learn a new skill. He'd tried to do the same to Clove once, but she'd quickly taught him just how little she appreciated the leers. Cato, at least, was intelligent enough to keep his distance from her.

If only those same standards applied to Glimmer, Clove mused.

* * *

Marvel was the exact opposite of his name. Sure, he was tall and good with a spear, but he was hideous and crude and vile. He smirked so often that even Cato got irritated by its frequency, sometimes at the other tributes, but more often than not at his own jokes. He considered himself the next Caesar Flickerman, but without the charm or subtlety or even fashion sense. Perhaps makeup would help his looks, Cato thought. Maybe then he wouldn't have to flirt with Clove so ridiculously obviously.

Cato hated him.

In training, Marvel alternated his remarkable focus between boring, blonde Glimmer and snarky, sadistic Clove. When Glimmer was busy clinging to Cato despite his attempts to brush her off, Marvel turned to Clove with an ill-timed joke or shameless innuendo. Clove appeared to dislike the attention, but not enough to put a stop to it, if the way she switched between sneering and simpering could be a clue.

Glimmer was only easier to get along with because she didn't spend her time trying to seduce his District partner. Clove detested Glimmer, avoided her whenever possible and spat all kinds of insults when she couldn't. She threw her knives with extra fury when Glimmer was nearby, like she was imagining the blades digging into the other girl's face, sinking into her heart.

Cato wondered if she wanted to stab him, too.

* * *

 **A/N: I'm not even ashamed of this.**


	5. those little slices of death

She woke up to screams. Surely they weren't her own- she was cruel and cold and too stoic to scream- but they bounced off the pale-lit walls and reverberated in her ears until she screamed again. She wasn't even sure why she was screaming, only that she'd dreamed of knives and fangs and fires and being trapped between them. Clove thrashed from side to side, smothered by silken sheets that tightened around her limbs the more she struggled.

Suddenly the door was flung open, rebounding off the opposing wall with such force that the wood frame splintered and the door almost closed again. The tiny rational bit of her mind not occupied by screaming wondered if the trains shouldn't have better security than this; she'd been screaming for quite some time now. But the rest of her broken mind made her scream louder at the intruder that was standing in her doorway and about to kill her. Maybe it already had.

The lights came on suddenly, stunning her into a dazed sort of silence. Clove blinked furiously to recover, gasping for breath through her raw throat. But the intruder was half-naked and unarmed, staring at her with worry etched in every brutish line on his face.

She couldn't stand to think of how she must appear, sweating and tangled in the bedsheets and half-sobbing. She really was nothing more than a little girl after all. She hadn't screamed before Thresh had taken a rock to her skull, _ever_ , and she had absolutely _shattered_. Cato must've seen the utter humiliation beneath the terror on her face, because he moved forward and closed the broken door behind him.

"You too?" Cato had never spoken a soft word in his life, she supposed dimly. Even just above a whisper, his tone was the kind of harsh that made her cringe back against the bed. But the wounded-animal part of her craved the near-gentleness of his whispered confession.

Her weakness prevailed, and she held open one end of the sheets. Cato slid silently beside her, smoothing out the sheets as much as possible as she clung to him. Clove dug her nails into his back and wrapped her legs around his sides and buried her head on his chest as she sobbed. Dimly, she registered the heat of his arms around her back, rubbing slowly as if that were enough to hold her together.

That triggered a whole different kind of fit, and it was a very long time before she'd managed to piece herself back together well enough to detach from his chest. Even then she was breathless and sniffling and weak and Cato would hold this over her head for the rest of her life and she'd just proved how pathetic she was and _Cato was right Cato was right Cato was right_.

"You too?" Cato asked her again, and it took a while to register that it was a question she was expected to answer. _Cato had nightmares too._ When she didn't respond for an uncomfortable stretch, he murmured, "I dreamed that Twelve fed me to the mutts, chopped to bits, and wouldn't let me die."

"Thresh," Clove whispered. "He was there and you weren't and he smashed my head in and I fell on the ground and I couldn't move so he took my knife and gave another to Twelve and they carved me up like a meal until I was begging them to stop." Clove never begged, _ever_ , and the thought of doing so scared her even more than being tortured. It was the power, she thought, the surrendering of her courage and strength to another that terrified her. She'd never had to rely on anyone else before. Mercy was not a concept she was familiar with.

But now she was relying on Cato, and she should have been panicked by the realization, but instead she let him hold her and soothe her back to the gray haze that bordering waking and sleep. He whispered something more in her ear, another quiet confession, but Clove floated away before the words could reach her.

When she woke up, he was gone.

* * *

 **A/N: I have two more drabbles and three oneshots in various stages of completion. When they are finished, that will be the entirety of my non-** ** _Ichor_** **work, barring any surges of inspiration or specific requests. I think I'm starting to exhaust this pairing, which is disappointing but inevitable. Perhaps I'll come up with something beautiful to partner with the final chapter of** ** _Ichor_** **. Time will tell.**


	6. Certainty

**A/N:** So I'm back! I know I've been super busy lately, but since I just sent the next chapter of Ichor to my beta (finally), I figured I'd treat myself by posting some of my other fics. I currently have three ready for publishing whenever I want and eight that I just need to proofread first, so I'm trying to space them out a bit. Also, the Burning House drabble series is in the process of being moved to a separate work, so I'll be removing that chapter in a little bit and posting it in a new story. I just thought I'd leave a little not-so-fluffy drabble here as a harbinger of the also not-so-fluffy works yet to come.

* * *

He's pretty sure he loves her.

Almost sure.

Maybe.

(She's sort of hard to love.)

Maybe it's the whole manipulation thing. That tends to put a damper on any relationship. And it's not like he hasn't ever doubted whether his feelings for her are conditioned or real. And it's not like he hasn't wondered when she'll grow tired of him and cast him aside like her favorite knife after the blade had bent beyond repair. And it's not like he hasn't considered that she's just using him for his admittedly impressive strength and connections.

But he loves her.

(Really.)

Yes, he knows how useful of a tool he is to her: the golden boy of District Two, beloved by the trainers, a formidable opponent who happens to be unable to hurt her. Glimmer had tried the same tactic when they first met, but she wasn't nearly as subtle as Clove had been so very long ago, and besides, he wasn't much for blondes. Still, Clove had dragged the other girl away by the wrist and had a furiously whispered discussion by the spears before finally letting her go. Glimmer had staggered away with a trace of fear in those brilliant green eyes, and Clove had laughed.

(It's sad, how he's come to believe that jealousy is comparable to love.)

Oh, but there's a flicker of something in her eyes when she sees the narrow glares he shoots Marvel whenever the other boy stands just a bit too close to Clove, something malicious and mocking and maybe even a little excited all at once. Jealousy isn't a one-way street, not for them.

She wears a blood-red dress for her interview, a sheet of fabric that clings to her hips and ends far too high up on her thigh, teasing with the prospect of sliding up just a little bit more. He feels a little dirty, watching her from backstage as he awaits his turn- she's _fifteen_ , he reminds himself- but she wears it with her chin up like she's daring someone to comment on the scandalous dress that had been made for one of the usual eighteen-year-old volunteers from Two.

"You looked beautiful tonight," he tells her later, when they've returned to their apartments with their blood still boiling over the impossible love story Twelve had spun. He pauses, licks his lips nervously. He thinks of the fact that they'll be sprinting from platforms in just a few short hours, racing for weapons and supplies that will enable them to hunt, to kill. He thinks of the possibility that they'll die. "I love you."

(She doesn't say it back.)

The last thing she ever says to him as she lies broken in his arms with a dent in her skull is "You're pathetic. You'll never be a Victor. This is why I never loved you." The cannon fires, and he drops her corpse and staggers backward with sheer horror at her utter cruelty, relentless till the end.

(With her dying breath, she kills him, too.)

As he hacks away at the mutts below the Cornucopia, his hatred spurs him on. Oh, if only the mutt lunging at him with Clove's icy eyes was Clove back to life- he'd greet her with a kiss and a blade through the neck. He hates her, of that he's absolutely certain.

Almost.

Maybe.

He falters.

(She's got her nails hooked in his heart and _rips_.)


	7. Wild Thing

**A/N:** It's weird to post an actual drabble for once. Housekeeping news: _Burning House_ has been moved over to its own story, and the latest chapter of _Ichor_ is in the editing process right now.

* * *

When Clove looks at him, he's reminded of a predator slinking through the underbrush, dark beneath the starless sky, the scent of blood curling in its nose like a siren's song, except the only ruin it promises is his own. He is the hare trembling beneath the shadow of the hawk, praying desperately for deliverance, but there is no mercy here. Madness is all that is left.

Her grin widens the longer she watches him, sharpening at the corners until it's just a mockery of happiness. Her smirk bites back a laugh, one of those high-pitched hyena chuckles that spiral in and out of lucidity. Her gaze is feral, pupils blown wide until they nearly swallow the dark brown of her irises, and hungry, bright with bloodlust. She looks nothing so much as Enobaria with her gold-tipped fangs gleaming with blood, half-wild, like a wolf that's learned to approach humans for scraps but will make off with a baby as soon as it's able to for no reason other than its delight in destruction.

She looks the same when she returns as a mutt.


	8. sacrifice yourself upon the pyre

**A/N:** I imagined the phrases in parentheses to be voices inside their heads, but this is, like many of my pieces, very open to interpretation.

* * *

 _sacrifice yourself upon the pyre of entertainment and thank us for the pleasure_

Listen. Listen to us speak. We have already lived your life. We have already won. We know. Listen.

Prepare. Cast aside your social class; we all wear blood here. All are equal, but some are more equal than others. Prove yourself. Discard your friends. Abandon your family. This is your life now.

Train. Power through the pain. (you're faking it/get it together/why don't you just try harder?) Ignore that. Again.

Believe. Have faith in your training. (you'll never be a victor/oh how the mighty have fallen/you're not cut out for this, are you?) Don't listen to that. Again.

Win. Seize the day. (you're pathetic/i can't even look at you/do you even want this?) Stop listening to that. Again.

Feel. No, stop. Shut that down. There's no room for emotions here. Cast your humanity away; you won't need it here. Only you can win. No one else. Empathy is a waste. Mercy is a weakness. There is only death. There is only chaos.

Volunteer. Taste the fruits of glory. (is there anyone else/stop shaking/are you even ready?) Why do you keep listening to that? Again.

Captivate. Make them remember you. (stop fussing/don't mess this up/why are you even here?) You're only sabotaging yourself. Again.

Impress. Overpower them with your confidence. (don't embarrass us/be the best/are you going to fail us?) We're only here to help you. Again.

Advance. Always claw for the top; take social climbing to new heights. These are not your friends. Don't make the mistake of liking them. Be prepared to abandon them at any moment. They are nothing. They are stumbling blocks placed before you on the road to victory. They are your competition.

Watch. Witness the greatest feats of honor. (so much better than you/a true victor/are you good enough?) We told you to stop. Again.

Lie. Falsify your beliefs, your history, your personality. (honesty is for fools/no one cares/don't you want to win?) Are you really so caught up in morality? Again.

Drown. Sink beneath the waves of blood. (we're watching you/don't disappoint us/would you rather be a monster or a corpse?) Even now you seek condemnation? Again.

Breathe. Remember this moment. Prepare to run. Prepare to kill. Brace your spine against Death's cold fingers and rush in where angels fear to tread. This, this is your moment of glory.

Fall. We have already won. You have already lost.


	9. Sugar and Spice

**A/N:** I am ridiculous and I am unashamed. Also wow, my first update on this in almost half a year! I think I might have a few more of these left, but maybe not. My attention's been captured by my longer projects, which doesn't leave a whole lot of time left for drabbles!

* * *

The girl facing her was a meringue topping on a cake, weightless and shimmering and drowning in sugar, a preposterous arrangement of bows and sheer fabric floating in her wake as she paced. The subtle makeup she wore widened her eyes and smoothed the sharp angles of her face, leaving her looking years younger. She looked sweet. She looked innocent. She looked-

"Ridiculous," Clove fumed to no one in particular. Her stylist had taken the whole sweet-little-girl act too far. She tore away with disgust from her reflection in the small backstage mirror. _No one will believe that I could win the Games, looking like this!_ But before she could strip the wads of peach fabric from her sleeves or pull back her artificial ringlets into a tamer style, preferably one not topped by a bow, a heavy hand landed on her shoulder.

She whipped around so quickly that she almost fell over, the flimsy heels of her shoes twisting precariously beneath her feet. "Watch it, Cato! You almost made me break my neck!" she snapped.

Cato didn't even flinch at her fury, calmly intercepting her tiny fist before it could reach him. "Well, don't you just look adorable, Clovey?" he crooned, eyes dragging down her body. "I _love_ that dress. Very… childish."

"Wanna trade?" she spat, twisting her wrist out of his hold. "I'll take your suit and you can have this stupid dress."

He laughed at that, and her hand curled into another fist, but she didn't move to attack him again. "I wouldn't want to deprive the Capitol the pleasure of seeing you in that lovely outfit. You're just _too cute_."

"I hate you," she informed him, lifting her chin to meet his gaze. "I can't wait until the arena."

Cato smiled slowly, _dangerously._ "The feeling is mutual, Clovey."

"Great. Now that we've confessed our deep and abiding love for one another, I'd like to get these interviews over with." Clove tore away from him and stalked off, head high. She didn't even stumble in her heels.

(But afterward, Cato gave her his jacket with a comment about how she was so cold on the inside that she probably needed it to keep warm, and she grumbled about how it was contaminated by his disgusting skin but slipped it on over her dress anyway. Besides, she told herself, his jacket needed a little sparkle.)


	10. Leaving Dress

**A/N:** For Che.

* * *

When Clove snarls out a threat before she's even halfway out of the dressing room, Cato knows he's in for a treat. He's right.

"Cute dress," he manages to say without snickering. It is cute. Ruffles and bows and sparkles and so sweet he almost feels sick just looking at it. He thinks he saw a similar one on one of the Capitolites who raced beside their train on the way in. Then again, that girl was no more than eight.

"Fuck you," she spits, stalking past him, then pauses and smirks at him. "Actually, you wish."


	11. Midnight Musings

**A/N:** For Poke.

* * *

"Hey." A nudge to his shoulder. "Hey." A harder kick to his back. "Wake up, asshat."

He rolls over just in time to deflect the boot aimed at his stomach and props himself on his elbows, squinting in the near-darkness. "What do you want?"

He doesn't even have to see Clove to know that she's rolling her eyes. "It's your turn to make sure we don't all die while we sleep. Try to do a better job than Glimmer."

"Cold," he says with a trace of admiration.

She shrugs. "It's a cruel world. Now scoot. I'm stealing your sleeping bag."


	12. Hide Your Claws

**A/N:** For Em.

* * *

"Play nice," Brutus warns as he leads her over to another fellow trainee. "Scare this one off, too, and you'll have no one left to partner with if you ever want to make it to the Games."

She takes one look at the meathead before her- twice her size, half as smart, and nowhere _near_ as pretty- and snorts. "Like hell."

"I agree," the meathead says. Huh. She hadn't figured him capable of speech. "Even _I_ couldn't help her be chosen to volunteer."

Oh, he did _not_ just say that. Her eyes flash. "You're on."

Behind them, Brutus just grins.


	13. Veil

"You'll be great someday," she says in the night. "People will fall to their knees before you. You will be loved. You will be feared."

"Tell me how," he begs. "Tell me how to win."

She leans forward, her slight body not even rustling the twigs beneath her. "Let me show you."

"I missed you," he says, too quickly, as the edges of her skin fade into starlight. "I'll win for you, this time I will. I promise."

Her smile is a knife's edge, sharp and fleeting. "I know you will."

As the cameras sleep, Cato talks to empty air.


End file.
